We’ve often discussed the psychology of criminals, especially violent criminals, and the determination of many progressives to superimpose motivations entirely different from those that are actually in play. See, for instance, these rather vivid examples, in which carjackers are more than happy to reveal what makes them indulge in carjacking.

Needless to say, it ain’t desperation.

I mention this because some fashionable and quite wrong-headed assertions are being aired, with an all too familiar imperviousness:

You reduce crime by eliminating poverty. The reason so called nice neighborhoods have lower crime rates is because people’s basic needs are being met. It is not because of police, alarm systems, or neighborhood associations. Poverty creates crime.

— ‏ً (@justjargons) October 18, 2026

Efforts at correction ensue, including items that are brief but not irrelevant, and objections to the assumptions of such go-to pieties:

@justjargons That is an insult to the millions of poor people who don’t commit crimes. Shame on you.

— Thomas Dolislager🇺🇸✝️🪖 (@HonestWorldview) October 19, 2026

This chap helpfully remarks,

Before steering the author of the original post to a study showing how sudden windfalls – say, lottery wins – have no effect on criminal tendencies, beyond a slightly increased risk of speeding tickets.

Ditto guaranteed basic incomes, as shown by this study.

Or put another way,

@justjargons You have causality backwards.

Crime creates poverty.

Nice neighborhoods are nice because they are populated by people who don’t destroy.

Neighborhoods populated by people who destroy are destroyed physically, economically, etc.

— Zachary Werrell, Esq. (@zkwerrell) October 19, 2026

And I rather like this one:

The “poverty causes crime” people think they’re being empathetic when they’re not. They’re removing agency from the equation. https://t.co/kAtPcv6nZ3

— Possum Reviews (@ReviewsPossum) October 19, 2026

At which point, readers may wish to revisit the carjackers mentioned above and their delight in seeing their victims soiling themselves in terror. Because, to quote a carjacker named Tall, “It’s a rush thing… I feel good.” Or as a female carjacker named PoPo put it, “It’s funny just to see them shaking and pissing all over theyself.”

The latter being a charming creature who assaults and terrorises random people, at gunpoint, robbing them of their cars and wedding rings, before getting her hair done.

The struggles of many progressives to understand what empathy actually is have been noted before, at some length and with relevant illustrations.

As I said at the time:

Or not doing it at all.

Update, via the comments:

Regarding the aforementioned imperviousness, I should add that, so far as I can see, the author of the original post, Mr JustJargons, has yet to respond to any of the quite numerous replies.

Commenter EmC quotes this,

Adding merely,

Well, some things do bear repeating.

And when efforts at mitigation and excuse-making – invoking poverty – are applied to creatures like, say, the vile sow featured here, those efforts are hard to see as anything other than perverse.

As I said at the time, if you wanted to radically lower your estimation of the human species, she’d be the gal to call. Along with her social-media admirers. The ones applauding her chronic thievery and merrily clicking like.

For more on the subject of crime and those superimposed motives, see this trilogy of posts. In which, the featured perpetrators may make any progressive empathy, so-called, rather more difficult to sustain.

Given ongoing events, and lifted from the comments, a reminder, were one needed, that there are titillated creatures who want to see your homes burn:

Because they’re intellectuals, you know. Enthusiasts of “anticolonialism.”

Update, via the comments:

And I’m just going to leave this here:

“What do you think of Birmingham Cathedral?”

— “It’s shit but it’s a nice place to smoke weed. They’re not my ancestors, I don’t care.”

You cannot coexist with this. https://t.co/82op1dta4q

— iamyesyouareno (@iamyesyouareno) February 2, 2026

For no reason whatsoever.

Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

An attempt was made. || Containment breach. || Effortless and briskly. || Mobility solution. || Tom Jones’ Sex Bomb, but sung in the style of the 1500s. || For all your emergency bikini needs. || On the never-never, or the thrill of hire purchase, 1958. || How to straighten crossed eyes. || Relativistic Asteroids, a game about time, light and blowing stuff up. || Toilet-related complication. And the clock is ticking. || Livestreaming location of note. || The thrill of shelving, 1979. || Sudden-onset sitting. || Strange new worlds. || Missing woman. || You want one and you know it. || As one does. || A beginner’s guide to your dynamic vagina. || I do like the pig. || Percentages. || The progressive retail experience, parts 763, 764 and 765. || Whaling fashion, 1834. || And a reminder that true love is a beautiful thing.

To enable extra commenting options – including @username mentions, comment editing, upvotes, custom avatars, and live notifications – scroll down to the black ‘Meta’ box at the very bottom of the page and click register. It’s free and quite painless.

For additional rumblings, follow me on X.

Because some things bear repeating, a few items from the archives:

Damned If You Do.

When your status depends on being impossible to please.

The D-Words.

On supposedly racist traffic cameras. Convolutions ensue.

Our Betters Victorious, And Still Unhappy.

On the not-at-all-spiteful psychology of the well-heeled progressive woman.

When They Won’t Keep On Saying Just How Special You Are.

On “non-binary” motherhood and making others mouth absurdities.

For those craving more, this is a pretty good place to start.

Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

And in always-respect-the-media news, we turn to the Crime pages of the Chicago Tribune:

The situation, since you ask, was one in which Mr Kelly Day, a cross-dressing man, aged 32, stabbed to death a fifty-year-old stranger named Larry Young. Such was the vigour of the attack, Mr Young was stabbed no fewer than thirteen times – in the head, neck and shoulder – with the tip of the knife breaking off and remaining embedded in his skull.

Mr Young, the party being stabbed to death, was, one might conclude, rather more directly affected by the incident than some notional trans community.

Mr Young had apparently made some needless and unflattering comment about Mr Day’s non-female status, following which Mr Day became “extremely angry” and a quarrel ensued. Mr Young then pushed Mr Day “before walking away toward a nearby gas station across the street.”

Just to be sure, one assumes.

A suboptimal interaction, certainly, with no parties emerging as entirely fragrant. However, to frame the altercation as an illustration of “how quickly violence can affect the trans community” does seem rather bold. One might say misleading.

Following his fit of indignant stabbiness, Mr Day discarded the knife and fled the scene, before being arrested at Jackson Park Hospital, where he was requesting treatment for a cut on his finger, sustained during his attack of Mr Young, and which he claimed was the result of a cooking mishap.

Predictably, the Chicago Tribune refers to Mr Day, a man, as a woman, using the terms she and her, thereby adding to the confusion.

Via Wesley Yang.